Experience with Xenforo?

[Demonfaze]

Hey guys,

I'm looking into launching a forum for an upcoming game with my company.

In the past, I've had experience with vBulletin, but I noticed TheHelper switched over to Xenforo.

After reading into things, I'm heavily leaning toward Xenforo, but I'm a little hesitant since I haven't actually used it yet.

It'd be great if anyone (especially TH admins) could chip in with how Xenforo has worked out for TH in comparison to VB.

 

[The Helper]

Really bad in the beginning though we did work it out somewhat but this new version simply rocks and it will only get better - we were unable to bring over the site template when we switched from VBulletin to Xenforo 1.0 and we finally got another set then we switched to 2.0 and we unable to bring the Template again so we are starting from scratch. The add ins available and coolness outweigh the loss of reputation and the Internal Activity Reports and other stuff that VBulletin had. I feel confident saying now is a time to use Xenforo instead of VBulletin - plus they have very active forums and lots of people have caught on it is a better product than VBulletin moreso in the latest version. Great to see you checking in Demonfaze! It is like I have talked with an old friend!

 

[Demonfaze]

Awesome--thanks for your advice. I just purchased a license. It sounds like most of the cons had to do with switching, rather than starting from scratch as I am.

Definitely fun posting here again! TH is literally what got me into online communities and I actually lurk pretty regularly. I'll try to post something every now and then if I can.

 

[The Helper]

Keep checking back as I bet Ghan might have something to add on the server side of things. One of our affiliates RPDom on the bottom of the sidebar has a nice Xenforo site too if you want to check it out. Dark Wizard, that sites admin is the one that helped us redesign the site for the new version.

 

[Demonfaze]

Cool, I'll shoot you a message when things are slightly further along. I'm really impressed with the variety of configuration options in the Admin CP so far.

For integrating user accounts with something like Wordpress (so that people can comment on a blog using their forum account), I'm assuming I just use a third party plugin?

 

[The Helper]

There are tons of third party plug-ins available you just have to research what is out there and the best place for that is probably the Xenforo forums. We have plug ins for the Chat script on the sidebar, the reputation system, the news portal page, etc and they seem to work well. Some are free, some are paid you just have to check what is available.

 

[Demonfaze]

Got it. I'm a few hours into installation/setup, and it's going reasonably well.

Is it possible to specify an HTML page for the index.php, rather than displaying a Xenforo page?

For example, could you, in theory, make http://thehelper.net point to an HTML page without changing the URL structure of the rest of the forums?

 

[tom_mai78101]

I think asking that in the Xenforos Support Forums would net you a more detailed answer catered to your individual needs.

With that said, paid plugins are nice to have if your community is large and active enough.

 

[Ghan]

Got it. I'm a few hours into installation/setup, and it's going reasonably well.

Is it possible to specify an HTML page for the index.php, rather than displaying a Xenforo page?

For example, could you, in theory, make http://thehelper.net point to an HTML page without changing the URL structure of the rest of the forums?

There's a portal addon out there that we are using. I think Dark Wizard had to modify it because it is somewhat outdated right now, but the author is supposedly working on a paid version that will fix all the issues and work with the latest xenForo version.
None of that allows you to have a straight HTML page as the portal index, though. If you want to avoid the xenForo handler altogether, then you might want to have the root directory sit at /forums or something like that.

 

[Demonfaze]

There's a portal addon out there that we are using. I think Dark Wizard had to modify it because it is somewhat outdated right now, but the author is supposedly working on a paid version that will fix all the issues and work with the latest xenForo version.
None of that allows you to have a straight HTML page as the portal index, though. If you want to avoid the xenForo handler altogether, then you might want to have the root directory sit at /forums or something like that.

Yeah that's what I ended up doing. Thanks!

 

[The Helper]

I thought we already got the paid version of the portal We got the DW Hack but love it! They probably told me but I forgot whatever - when the paid portal comes out we should switch to it. I cannot believe there is not something out there already does this paid.

 

[tom_mai78101]

Is the paid portal still in development? Maybe we can provide the DW hack as a patch, send it to them, and have them implemented, so that we can get official support from them.

My guess is that since it is a hack, it might be because the devs haven't had a use case scenario for it, or haven't known about this. If it is working here, and they don't have what we're currently using, we can provide them this, and make it a win-win solution.

 

[The Helper]

I dont know what is up on this one.